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THE SHALLOW AND THE
DEEP
THE SHALLOW AND THE DEEP, LONG RANGE ECOLOGY MOVEMENTS
A SUMMARY
Arne Naess
Originally published in Inquiry (Oslo), 16 (1973).
THE EMERGENCE OF ECOLOGISTS from their former relative
obscurity marks a turning point in our scientific
communities. But their message is twisted and misused. A
shallow, but presently rather powerful movement, and a
deep, but less influential movement, compete for our
attention. I shall make an effort to characterize the
two.
I. The Shallow Ecology movement:
Fight against pollution and resource depletion.
Central objective: the health and affluence of people in
the developed countries.
II. The Deep Ecology movement:
1. Rejection of the man-in-environment image in favor the
relational, total-field image. Organisms as knots in
the biospherical net or field of intrinsic relations. An
intrinsic relation between two things A and B is such
that the relation belongs to the definitions of basic
constitutions of A and B, so that without the relation, A
and B are no longer the same things. The total-field
dissolves not on the man-in-environment concept, but
every compact thing-in-milieu concept - except when
talking at a superficial or preliminary level of
communication.
2. Biospherical egalitarianism - in principle.
The "in principle" clause is inserted because
any realistic praxis necessitates some killing,
exploitation, and suppression. The ecological
field-worker acquires a deep-seated respect, or even
veneration, for ways and forms of life. He reaches an
understanding from within, a kind of understanding that
others reserve for fellow men and for a narrow section of
ways and forms of life. To the ecological field-worker,
the equal right to live and blossom is an
intuitively clear and obvious value axiom. Its
restriction to humans is an anthropocentrism with
detrimental effects upon the life quality of humans
themselves. The quality depends in part upon the deep
pleasure and satisfaction we receive from close
partnership with other forms of life. The attempt to
ignore our dependence and to establish a master-slave
role has contributed to the alienation of man from
himself.
Ecological egalitarianism implies the reinterpretation of
the future-research variable, "level of
crowding," so that general mammalian
crowding and loss of life-equality is taken seriously,
not only human crowding. (Research on the high
requirements of free space of certain mammals has,
incidentally, suggested that theorists of human urbanism
have largely underestimated human life-space
requirements. Behavioral crowding symptoms, such as
neuroses, aggressiveness, loss of traditions, are largely
the same among mammals.)
3. Principles of diversity and of symbiosis.
Diversity enhances the potentialities of survival, the
chances of new modes of life, the richness of forms. And
the so-called struggle for life, and survival of the
fittest, should be interpreted in the sense of the
ability to coexist and cooperate in complex
relationships, rather than the ability to kill, exploit,
and suppress. "Live and let live" is a more
powerful ecological principle than "Either you or
me."
The latter tends to reduce the multiplicity of kinds of
forms of life, and also to create destruction within the
communities of the same species. Ecologically inspired
attitudes therefore favor diversity of human ways of
life, of cultures, of occupations, of economies. They
support the fight against economic and cultural, as much
as military, invasion and domination, and they are
opposed to the annihilation of seals and whales as much
as to that of human tribes and cultures.
4. Anti-class posture. Diversity of human ways
of life is in part due to (intended or unintended)
exploitation and suppression on the part of certain
groups. The exploiter lives differently from the
exploited, but both are adversely affected in their
potentialities of self-realization. The principle of
diversity does not cover differences due merely to
certain attitudes or behaviors forcibly blocked or
restrained. The principles of ecological egalitarianism
and of symbiosis support the same anti-class posture. The
ecological attitude favors the extension of all three
principles to any group conflicts, including those of
today between developing and developed nations. The three
principles also favor extreme caution toward any over-all
plans for the future, except those consistent with wide
and widening classless diversity.
5. Fight against pollution and resource depletion.
In this fight ecologists have found powerful supporters,
but sometimes to the detriment of their total stand. This
happens when attention is focused on pollution and
resource depletion rather than on the other points, or
when projects are implemented which reduce pollution but
increase evils of other kinds. Thus, if prices of life
necessities increase because of the installation of
anti-pollution devices, class differences increase too.
An ethics of responsibility implies that ecologists do
not serve the shallow, but the deep ecological movement.
That is, not only point five, but all seven points must
be considered together.
Ecologists are irreplaceable informants in any society,
whatever their political color. If well organized, they
have the power to reject jobs in which they submit
themselves to institutions or to planners with limited
ecological objectives. As it is now, ecologists sometimes
serve masters who deliberately ignore the wider
perspectives.
6. Complexity, not complication. The theory of
ecosystems contains an important distinction between what
is complicated without any Gestalt or unifying
principles--we may think of finding our way through a
chaotic city--and what is complex. A multiplicity of more
or less lawful, interacting factors may operate together
to form a unity, a system. We make a shoe or use a map or
integrate a variety of activities into a workaday
pattern. Organisms, ways of life, and interactions in the
biosphere in general, exhibit complexity of such an
astoundingly high level as to color the general outlook
of ecologists. Such complexity makes thinking in terms of
vast systems inevitable. It also makes for a keen, steady
perception of the profound human ignorance
of biospherical relationships and therefore of the effect
of disturbances.
Applied to humans, the complexity-not-complication
principle favors division of labor, not fragmentation
of labor. It favors integrated actions in which the
whole person is active, not mere reactions. It favors
complex economies, an integrated variety of means of
living. (Combinations of industrial and agricultural
activity, of intellectual and manual work, of specialized
and nonspecialized occupations, of urban and non-urban
activity, of work in city and recreation in nature with
recreation in city and work in nature...)
It favors soft technique and "soft
future-research," less prognosis, more clarification
of possibilities. More sensitivity toward continuity and
live traditions, and more importantly, towards our state
of ignorance.
The implementation of ecologically responsible policies
requires in this century an exponential growth of
technical skill and invention--but in new directions,
directions which today are not consistently and liberally
supported by the research policy organs of our nation
states.
7. Local autonomy and decentralization. The
vulnerability of a form of life is roughly proportional
to the weight of influences from afar, from outside the
local region in which that form has obtained an
ecological equilibrium. This lends support to our efforts
to strengthen local self-government and material and
mental self-sufficiency. But these efforts presuppose an
impetus towards decentralization. Pollution problems,
including those of thermal pollution and recirculation of
materials, also lead us in this direction, because
increased local autonomy, if we are able to keep other
factors constant, reduces energy consumption. (Compare an
approximately self-sufficient locality with one requiring
the importation of foodstuff, materials for house
construction, fuel and skilled labor from other
continents. The former may use only five percent of the
energy used by the latter.) Local autonomy is
strengthened by a reduction in the number of links in the
hierarchical chains of decision. (For example a chain
consisting of a local board, municipal council, highest
sub-national decision-maker, a state-wide institution in
a state federation, a federal national government
institution, a coalition of nations, and of institutions,
e.g., E. E. C. top levels, and a global institution, can
be reduced to one made up of a local board, nation-wide
institution, and global institution.) Even if a decision
follows majority rule at each step, many local interests
may be dropped along the line, if it is too long.
Summing up then, it should, first of all, be borne in
mind that the norms and tendencies of the Deep Ecology
movement are not derived from ecology by logic or
induction. Ecological knowledge and the life style of the
ecological field-worker have suggested, inspired, and
fortified the perspectives of the Deep Ecology
movement. Many of the formulations in the above
seven-point survey are rather vague generalizations, only
tenable if made more precise in certain directions. But
all over the world the inspiration from ecology has shown
remarkable convergences. The survey does not pretend to
be more than one of the possible condensed codifications
of these convergences.
Secondly, it should be fully appreciated that the
significant tenets of the Deep Ecology movement are
clearly and forcefully normative. They express a
value priority system only in part based on results (or
lack of results, cf. point six) of scientific research.
Today, ecologists try to influence policy-making bodies
largely through threats, through predictions concerning
pollutants and resource depletion, knowing that
policy-makers accept at least certain minimum norms
concerning health. But it is clear that there is a vast
number of people in all countries, and even a
considerable number of people in power, who accept as
valid the wider norms and values characteristic of the
Deep Ecology movement. There are political potentials in
this movement which should not be overlooked and which
have little to do with pollution and resource depletion.
In plotting possible futures, the norms should be freely
used and elaborated.
Thirdly, insofar as ecology movements deserve our
attention, they are ecophilosophical rather than
ecological. Ecology is a limited science which
makes use of scientific methods. Philosophy is the most
general forum of debate on fundamentals, descriptive as
well as prescriptive, and political philosophy is one of
its subsections. By an ecosophy I mean a
philosophy of ecological harmony or equilibrium. A
philosophy is a kind of sophia wisdom, is openly
normative, it contains both norms, rules,
postulates, value priority announcements and
hypotheses concerning the state of affairs in our
universe. Wisdom is policy wisdom, prescription, not only
scientific description and prediction.
The details of an ecosophy will show many variations due
to significant differences concerning not only
"facts" of pollution, resources, population,
etc., but also value priorities. Today, however, the
seven points listed provide one unified framework for
ecosophical systems.
In general systems theory, systems are mostly conceived
in terms of causally or functionally interacting or
interrelated items. An ecosophy, however, is more like a
system of the kind constructed by Aristotle or Spinoza.
It is expressed verbally as a set of sentences with a
variety of functions, descriptive and prescriptive. The
basic relation is that between subsets of premises and
subsets of conclusions, that is, the relation of
derivability. The relevant notions of derivability may be
classed according to rigor, with logical and mathematical
deducations topping the list, but also according to how
much is implicitly taken for granted. An exposition of an
ecosophy must necessarily be only moderately precise
considering the vast scope of relevant ecological and
normative (social, political, ethical) material. At the
moment, ecosophy might profitably use models of systems,
rough approximations of global systematizations. It is
the global character, not preciseness in detail, which
distinguishes an ecosophy. It articulates and integrates
the efforts of an ideal ecological team, a team
comprising not only scientists from an extreme variety of
disciplines, but also students of politics and active
policy-makers.
Under the name of ecologism, various deviations
from the deep movement have been championed-primarily
with a one-sided stress on pollution and resource
depletion, but also with a neglect of the great
differences between underand over-developed countries in
favor of a vague global approach. The global approach is
essential, but regional differences must largely
determine policies in the coming years.
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